Apple Mysteriously Yanks Software from iPhone App Store

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Apple Mysteriously Yanks Software from iPhone App Store

Some iPhone application developers and users are befuddled by the mysterious removal of two programs from Apple's App Store over the weekend.

Apple on Friday evening removed Nullriver's NetShare – an application that essentially turns your iPhone into a wireless modem for your computer. That same day, Apple yanked Metasyntactic's BoxOffice, an app that allows you to search movie showtime listings.

Nullriver has received a vague response from Apple technicians regarding NetShare's removal. According to Nullriver, Apple said NetShare's removal was erroneous, and Apple is working to get the application back in the store.

"They want to get NetShare back up, but they want to do some technical analysis that they couldn't explain to us," said Adam Dan, CEO of Nullriver, in a phone interview. "The first time it went down it was human error – a glitch or something – it was a mistake."

Though Apple's explanation is vague, it's shocking that the company finally broke its radio silence.

The company has yet to speak to the developer of BoxOffice, however. Cyrus Najmabadi, BoxOffice's author, even commented in the MacRumors forum asking for the public's help after failing to contact Apple.

"Apple pulled the app yesterday without giving my any notification that they were doing it, or what their justification was for removing it,"Najmabadi wrote. "I've tried to contact them about the issue, but it's been a complete dead end. If anyone has a useful contact number for Apple, please let me know."

On a similar note, Apple was recently under fire for its lack of public openness regarding an e-mail outage in its internet service, MobileMe. The outage left 20,000 users without e-mail access – with nothing but a vague status message telling them their e-mail was down. After many users and journalists, including NY Times columnist David Pogue, criticized Apple for being opaque, the MobileMe team launched a blog to keep users updated on efforts to restore e-mail service.

But clearly Apple still has not learned its lesson, as it continues to keep its lips sealed – even to the people developing software that makes the iPhone even more attractive. Were 20,000 people not enough to convince Apple it's time to open up?

Updated 4 p.m. PDT: Apple has contacted Nullriver and said it plans to revive NetShare in the App Store.